And I'm so far behind on my goals that they may as well not exist at all! I'm so embarrassed! Here's my progress report:

Reading: I've done a lot of reading, but not from my reading list. I've read nearly 44 books since January, mostly fiction but also psychology, focusing on Alice Miller's writings. I've become a huge fan of Jonathan Ames (Wake up, Sir!, The Extra Man), Josh Lanyon (Adrien English mysteries) and also the writing team of Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux (Cut & Run, Sticks & Stones)

David Lloyd-George and the Boer War: Okay, made more progress here, but I'm still in the research and reading phase on this one. I've been working at this but I think I'll be another year before I actually get out of research mode and into writing since RL keeps getting in the way.

Librarians in Sci-Fi article: Still in research mode on this one too. Didn't really start seriously working on this until about a month ago but I'm hopeful that I'll have something done by January.

So how's everyone else doing?

Huge congrats to andy_slayde on reaching all your goals! I'm in serious envy of you.

Current Mood: embarrassed

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Finished the 3rd novella! It is for Torquere Press' Spice It Up Line. We had the spice of vanilla and it is without a title at the moment. Now to start the next batch of writing projects - one is even fandom. Ali talked me into doing a story for one of the fests going on. I'm very rusty with S/R fic. Wish it were R/R though...

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Woohoo! the lovely ali_wilde & I just finished novel #2. We are editing it now and have to send it to our publisher by Sunday. It is for Torquere Press' Color Box line. Our color is mist grey. It is roughly 35K long and doesn't have a title yet. It contains a writer of Het romances, a photographer, the dangers of jogging, a Scot in a kilt, pesky tree roots, a ghost with a purpose, a pretty Turkish angora named Max, the picturesque Adirondacks, vanilla and not so vanilla m/m lovin', coffee, cheese and naturally penguins.

Once this is done we will start novel #3. It will be for Torquere's Spice It Up line and we are hoping to get the spice of vanilla.

And.... I did outline my solo novel. No idea where I put those notes, but it's done.

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After seeing sam_can_do_it post here, it reminded me that I meant to post as well. But I got too distracted by NaNoWriMo. I too am alive...and slowly typing away at a story!

Personally, I'm happy that I've made it this far! I surpassed my word count from 2007. I only had 25% of the 50,000 written before I gave up. But now I'm at 35%! This year I'm gonna try and keep writing until the 30th and hopefully get to the 50,000! I know I've got enough story idea to get there...it's just working everything out with words. :)

How's everyone else out there doing?

Current Mood:busy

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I would like to point out that I'm still here though there is a large chance that I am not going to be accomplishing the goal that I originally set for myself. However, there is no giving up just alteration.

In the mean time, this is the most current distraction from my goal!

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Some progress since last night.1. Eddie is now John.2. Dislikable characters, mixed tones and Americanisms all need some attention, but at least I've faced my fear of them. Phew.3. Haha, yep, biscuits. Who knew?4. No RL here, I've concluded. No one thinks this is a good plan. And I don't think I'd cope. Ah, weight lifted :)

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I just received a short but sweet e-mail from someone who was absent from Friday's seminar. A few choice quotes, to avoid repeating the whole thing:

'I've read your creative writing piece and I loved it.'

Well I never. There's no predicting it. It's like X-factor evictions.There's nothing amazingly constructive in the rest of the e-mail, just effusive praise and no signs of confusion. (As a sidenote, I hated this person's submission. Grammatically eye-watering tragedy about Mary-Sues wandering the snowy French mountains and tripping over every so often. But she's nice enough in person.)

'I have found no fault in this extract.'

Alright, so she didn't read it. Can't blame her.

And the best one:

''I hope the session went well. Will see you soon.'

Oh my giddy aunt. I have to see these people again.

Current Mood: hopeful

Current Music:'Let It Be' - Nick Cave

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Hello goalsetters :)I'm Schemer, and my goal is to write a creative writing piece and accompanying essay in five weeks. It's for a university module, but it's become more personal in the last few days and I've frozen! Looking for much needed advice, coaxing and con-crit.

Face the music and blog. Gulp.

Five weeks ago I embarked upon a Creative Writing module, having bypassed the *this will emotionally drain me* stage to the *this is a piece of cake* level of calm. Having now submitted my piece, I'm back at *I'm draining, I'm DRAIIINNING* ***

Each week a member of the group submits their piece for group discussion. This Friday it was my turn. I'll say this fast: It did not go well. It went worse than any other person's submission. All of which went very well.

I'll admit, I shed a tear afterwards. In RL, I have't yet told anyone about this, which is a hell of a restraint for my fat gob, so subconciously I must be really upset about this.

Still, no use wallowing in self pity; the point is to achieve a good grade. As well as writing a piece of creative writing (about 2500-3000 words long for prose, although obviously this is only the roughest of guides. The idea is not to bore anyone. Which I did.) you submit an accompanying essay, talking about the piece's creation, inspiration etc. Mine is so far all about the radical rewriting I'm going to have to do.

I had initially thought to include the current draft of the piece every Sunday, but we'll omit the inclusion this week as my baby can't take any more attention in its current state. Next Sunday, rain or shine, a marginally shinier version will exist.Over the next 6-10 days (a reasonable goal!) I will go through all the notes submitted by the group and the professor. Here's what they've turned up so far:

Fun facts:Novel's current title: Crackers and RappersPiece's current title: Chapter Eight: All Over the FloorPiece's current word count: 2402

Initial goals:ONE: More than one person complained that the father and daughter Eddie and Ellie were named too similarly. I quite liked it as a feature. Is it really too confusing? Regardless, as a concedence to public opinion, one name will be changed. Ellie was originally 'Brighde' (unpronouncable) and Eddie was always Eddie (loosely based in my mind on Mr Izzard). What oh what should I call them?

TWO: The opening paragraph of a man with a hangover rushing to the toilet to vomit initially went down well. Then the group started complaining: too depressing; too out of sync with the comedic tone of the rest of the chapter; too short; too long; (and my favourite injury) 'we already know that he has only one sock on, don't tell us he has one off as well'. A pedantry point is ever I heard one. Still, that's going too. But should the whole submission be similar in tone, ie. humurous or serious? Can't I blend? How should I blend?

THREE: The first instance of Brit-picking I have ever encountered in Real Life: is it 'cookies' or 'biscuits' in the UK? Well it's blatantly a bastardization of both, and I preferred the sound of 'cookies' in this instance. But it's gonna become biscuits. And I may scrap it altogether. This is demoralizing.

FOUR: Dashes. Too many dashes. 'What are they for?' one person asked. I studied my piece. Well, they appear in dialogue to indicate a strained pause, I realized. But if that is not immediately apparaent to the reader than what are they for? I don't know.

FIVE: Intentionally, none of the characters are particularly likeable. Though this was not said aloud, it's come up in notes. Especially Ellie: childish, having a tantrum, unreasonable, defensive. Apparently either she or her sister Rebecca have to be likable, as the fued is between them and the reader needs a favourite. But I don't know how to write likeable people.

SIX: And only one--ONE--count it--grammatical error. Wasn't even an error, it was a typo, a full stop got left at the start of speech after a sentence was scrapped. Very different to every other punctuation wasteland that has been submitted so far. But if I say things like that I can't make these posts available to RL people, can I? :)

Final point for today: I'm thinking very seriously if giving RL people, friends, members of the module group, anyone, the LINK to this posts, for comments and advice. Is this even remotely a good idea?

*** Question: do capitals cheapen dialogue? If used sparingly, ie. once per story?

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Woohoo! Ali & I finished our novel (21,000 words) in the wee hours of the morning (for me anyway).Over 20,000 words so it counts as a novel according to my goal list ;o) (one down, two to go)

Now to edit and send it off. Two weeks to do that, then a quick 'freebie' for Torquere Press' Advent activities in December and then we can start novel #2.

Still need to outline my solo novel.

Still haven't read more of the books. I really haven't had the time. And doubt I will anytime soon. With all this writing that we need to asap. Edits to the Sandalwood story (the one we just finished, sandalwood was the theme), the Advent piece, and figure out something to do when we promote them in Jan on torquere_social. Probably will do a Mad Lib like we did earlier this week.

Ok, I'm babbling. Can you tell I've only had 3 hours sleep? Time for a nap...